Course Introduction
Advanced Placement English is an
annual class taught to only the best English students in lieu of another senior
English class. In both degree of difficulty and in quantity of material read,
it is far more demanding than any other English class taught at Midwood.
Students taking the course will be expected to interpret the nuances of
language in order to achieve comprehension, to learn to see how symbol, metaphor,
tone, setting, and point of view create meaning. While students may have
achieved high grades in the past by identifying plot and theme, they will now be
expected to analyze how language creates
meaning and to think about that meaning in more complex ways.
Advanced Placement English is
challenging and rewarding. Students taking the course should not be primarily
interested in achieving college placement or credit (although this may happen
for some of them—but only some!), but instead in the rewards of careful and
rigorous study to produce a widened background and a deepened comprehension.
The class demands literate writing
ability. Students write several timed essays in class and several multi-page
papers at home. These formal responses include analytical papers addressing: 1)
how writers employ language to achieve effects in their works; 2) the social,
cultural, or historical ramifications of the works. Argumentative essays that
focus on the particular elements of artistry and style writers employ to create
a work’s aesthetic merit will also be assigned. In addition, students will
write more informal assignments, including personal responses and reader’s
notebook entries. At-home papers and responses
will undergo a workshop process, in which early drafts are evaluated and
receive feedback from small student groups and from me, and final papers are
reviewed and rewritten based on my comments. Your workshop group will review
your rewrite, where you’ll again receive feedback from me and your group. All formal
written work will be assessed for complexity of thought and for correctness and
complexity of language. This class will include specific lessons focused on the
use of effective rhetoric, the development of each writer’s unique voice, the
establishment of appropriate tone, and a growing awareness of and capacity to
employ differing tones based on the purpose of a piece of writing and its
intended audience. By the end of the school year your own diction, syntax, sentence
complexity, and awareness of tone should be considerably improved.
As minimum requirements for entering
the class, students must love to read and do it as a leisure activity, in
addition to reading what is assigned them for school.
Students who have not previously read
The Scarlet Letter, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, and A Tale of Two Cities (preferably,
although another major work by Dickens will do), will be instructed to read
them during the summer before they begin taking the class. These seminal works
of literature are basic background material.
This course is designed to comply with
the curricular requirements described in the most recent AP English Course Description.
With each work we study, students will note the unique diction and syntax
of the author and be asked to write informal assignments making use of new
vocabulary and sharing their insights about diction and syntax in their readers’
notebooks.
Although reading assignments may vary
from year to year, the selections for the calendar year 2013-2014 follow, as an
indication of the extent and difficulty of the course:
1.
Hamlet (purchased as will be another
Shakespeare play to be announced)
2.
Several of the books in the Old and New
Testament with related poetry and short fiction
3.
The Sound
and the Fury, Faulkner (purchased)
4.
Crime and Punishment, Dostoevsky
5.
The Secret Sharer, Conrad
6.
Cold Mountain, Charles Frazier
7.
Song of Solomon, Toni Morrison
8.
The Great Gatsby, Fitzgerald
9.
Heart of Darkness, Conrad
10.
The Poisonwood Bible, Barbara Kingsolver
11.
A Visit from the Goon Squad, Jennifer Egan
12.
Poetry
throughout the school year.
In addition, students will use as
reference books Literature: an Introduction
to Reading and Writing (6th edition) and Edith Hamilton’s Mythology.
Every student will keep a reader’s notebook.
Every nightly reading assignment will be followed by specific homework
questions to be handed in twice weekly and an informal reader’s reaction
recorded in the notebook. Students will note intellectual and emotional
reactions to developments in plot, theme, and authors’ use of language,
including selected new vocabulary words and uses. I’ll review these notebooks
twice a month and will comment on students’ notebook observations. In addition
students have the following required tasks:
·
Bi-weekly
quizzes on advanced literary terms and their application to poetry and prose
·
Timed
essays using AP style questions
·
Revisions
of graded essays to provide a chance to reframe ideas and improve technical skills,
including improving writing vocabulary
·
Personal
Response essays (a more informal opportunity for self-expression)
·
Persuasive
essays (intended to spark debate; students will learn the rhetorical strategy
of “procatalepsis” whereby the writer raises and answers potential objections
to his own argument, thereby strengthening his position against attack).
·
Creative
Writing (modeling Sonnets, villanelles, concrete poetry etc.; writing a parody
of a selected author’s style, and /or a prose modeling Faulkner’s stream of
consciousness).
Class Schedule
Unit 1- Introduction to course based on
close readings of several poems: Frost, “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening”
and Shakespeare, Sonnets 20, 73, and 116. This week introduces and expands on
the following terms: denotation, connotation, meter, rhyme scheme, assonance, consonance, alliteration,
sibilance, metaphor, allusion, synecdoche, metonymy. Students will study the poets’ words carefully to unlock
the layers of connotative meaning and discover the relationship between the
poems’ forms and their meanings. (one week)
Unit 2 - Hamlet (Folger’s edition). The play is approached from several levels:
as representative of the five-act form of Shakespearian tragedy; as a dramatic
staging of several themes: thought vs. action, the nature of family
responsibility, doubling (dramatic foils), revenge, incest; and as a
masterpiece of metaphoric language. Besides examining moments in which the text
produces clear meanings, we will also carefully analyze those sections where
meanings are in dispute or are open to multiple interpretations, and we will
look at how variants in language among our sources for the plays potentially
change meaning (and lead to intense controversies). In addition, we will begin
a discussion in this unit about what constitutes artistic merit and quality.
Why is Hamlet regarded as a
masterpiece? The concept of the literary canon will be introduced.
Prior to the assignment of the first paper, several lessons on writing
correct and complex expository English will be given. Among the topics covered
will be writing the introductory sentence and paragraph, with stress placed on creating
a complex sentence that simultaneously introduces the main concerns of the
paper and includes specifics. Students will be divided into four-person
workshops to mutually aid one another in building complex sentences from notes
based on specific questions about metaphoric language.
On the last day of the play’s
reading, the class studies Macbeth’s “Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow”
speech, contrasting Macbeth’s musings on life and death with Hamlet’s. (three
weeks)
As a transition to Unit 3, we do a
close reading of three of John Donne’s Holy Sonnets, contrasting Donne’s use of
sonnet form with Shakespeare’s.
Unit 3 - Selections from Genesis, Exodus
1-21; Leviticus 19; 2 Samuel 11 & 12; Isaiah 1-5, 42, 58; Ezekial 17-18;
all of Mathew; John, 11. This study concentrates on the myriad symbols emerging
from the bible. Students are asked with each reading assignment to note symbols
(for example: number symbolism, water symbolism, phallic symbolism) as well as
to study the document as a reflection of an ancient, oral tradition. We will see
the interconnectedness between Old and New Testament traditions, which is why
we read selections from the prophets before reading Mathew. We will understand
the parables as a form of allegory. We deliberately read the King James edition
because of its enormous influence on the writers of much of English literature,
while noting that newer translations may be more faithful to the original Hebrew
and Greek.
In several cases we will compare
earlier and later translations and focus on controversies or debates involving
translation and interpretation of texts. Societal issues such as nation
building, incest, sexual inequality, righteousness, and the importance of
family and clan are discussed. In addition we’ll read excerpts from Mìlton’s Paradise Lost and two short stories,
Hawthorne’s “Rappaccini’s Daughter” and Baldwin’s “Sonny’s Blues.” Each of
those stories is studied in relationship to biblical themes and for the
complexity of its own language. (four weeks)
As we conclude this unit, we spend
several days on Gwendolyn Brooks’s poetry, moving from the religiously
motivated poems to those that deal with social issues, particularly those that
involve race and class. This prepares us for:
Unit 4 - Faulkner, The Sound and the Fury. We begin with a two-day discussion of “A
Rose for Emily.” The discussion introduces Faulkner’s Yoknapatawpha Saga and
its attendant social concerns. We discuss the importance of understanding the
difference between the narrative voice and the author’s own viewpoint, and we
stress several examples of metaphoric and symbolic language in the story.
During the reading of the novel,
particularly during the confusing opening two sections, students are asked to
recognize time changes in the narratives and to focus on how each boy’s diction
illustrates his obsessive concerns and illuminates character traits of the
other people in the story. (three weeks)
Unit 5 - Crime
and Punishment. In this unit we study Dostoevsky’s success in writing a psychological
novel more than thirty years before Freud’s Interpretation
of Dreams. We examine the techniques that make readers sympathetic to
Raskolnikov, despite his many disagreeable qualities. We note the many ways
each character is a representation of the myriad facets of Raskolnikov’s
character and note how doubling is used throughout the novel to indicate the
theme of divided self. We closely examine the first of Raskolnikov’s dreams
(the dream of the beaten horse) to indicate how it stands for virtually all of
the relationships in the novel. We discuss the psychology of the criminal mind,
including Freud’s dream theory, and the frequent use of Christian symbolism
related to Sonia’s role in Raskolnikov’s redemption.
We supplement the doubling motif by
reading Conrad’s The Secret Sharer
and watching Hitchcock’s Strangers on a
Train. (four weeks including vacation time)
Unit 6 - Intensive poetry unit. We undertake
an intensive exploration of 200 years of language poetry. Individual students
are assigned to read and lead discussions of poetry by Wordsworth, Coleridge,
Byron, Shelley, Keats, Tennyson, Arnold, Poe, Whitman, Dickinson, Hardy, Eliot,
Cummings, Williams, Stevens, Frost, Auden, Jarrell, Ginsburg, Rich, Plath,
Sexton, and Heaney. During the unit, we study three essay questions on poetry
from previous AP tests. Two are answered as timed in-class exams. The whole
unit is preparation for the largest assignment of the year, which the students
accomplish over intersession: (four weeks)
Unit 7 – Charles Frazier, Cold Mountain. After initial discussions
of the civil war setting and the story of Odysseus, we begin a process in which
students are asked to initiate all lessons. Their homework sheet begins this way:
For all reading assignments, you will note examples of language you believe are
rich in imagery, metaphor, or symbolism and further conclude how these devices
may be related to themes in the novel, either those we have already noted or
new ones. At least once during the reading of the novel you will be expected to
prepare a brief explication of a chapter, or section of a chapter. You will
then lead a class discussion on the examples of language use you’ve selected,
and how language develops theme, character, and other important elements of the
narrative. (three weeks)
Unit 8 - Song
of Solomon. This unit focuses on the metaphors and symbols Morrison uses to
write a novel that addresses issues of race, gender, class, and family
dynamics. We supplement our reading by watching Episode One of the Eyes on the
Prize television series, reading Gwendolyn Brooks’ “Last Quatrain of the Ballad
of Emmett Till,” viewing stunning photographs of the Birmingham demonstrations
of 1963, and reading Martin Luther King Jr.’s “Letter From A Birmingham Jail.”
We often read aloud pages of the book that capture the entertaining diction of
several of the characters. When we have completed the novel, we read the “Song
of Solomon” from the Old Testament and discuss its relevance, as well as the
biblical origins of most of the novel’s names. (three weeks)
At this point we spend a week on
intensive AP Test review, using past AP essay questions and short answers from
the course description book.
Unit 9 - The
Great Gatsby. This one-week unit features close examination of the obvious
symbols such as the green light, the eyes of Dr Eckleburg, the houses of Gatsby
and the Buchanans, and the more detailed metaphoric description of both people
and places. (one week)
Unit 10 - Heart
of Darkness and The Poisonwood Bible.
Students will examine two novels set in Africa. Conrad’s use of light and dark
to illuminate the darkness of human behavior returns us to themes in The Secret Share and Crime and Punishment. This also opens up
discussion of imperialism as a political darkness in human nature. Marlow’s
simultaneous identification with and repulsion for Kurtz is explored through Conrad’s
masterful use of chiaroscuro. The way Kingsolver is able to tell her story
through five distinct narrative voices is compared with the multiple narrations
of The Sound and the Fury. Students
prepare for the lessons by selecting language which illustrates the character
of each narrator. Often the girls are talking symbolically without knowing it,
though both Adah and Orleana are intentionally rnetaphoric. Political issues
about the history of Africa, the Congo in particular, are addressed by readings
from Adam Hochschild’s King Leopold’s Ghost
and by lessons on Cold War politics. (four weeks)
Unit 11 – A Visit from the Goon Squad, Jennifer Egan. For the course’s final unit, we will read
Egan’s 2010 Pulitzer Prize winning novel. In our work, we’ll continue our
discussion of multiple narrative viewpoints addressed already in Kingsolver and
Faulkner, and we’ll examine closely the novel’s complex structure of time
shifts, comparing Egan’s approach with that found in Faulkner, Frazier, and Morrison,
among others. This discussion of time shifts will lead us to examine how the
novel’s time structure plays a role in developing its thematic commentary on
time itself, and the role that loss, nostalgia, and change play in the lives of
the characters. Students will also read selected passages from the opening
section of Proust’s Swann’s Way—an
important influence on Egan and her novel.
In addition, we’ll examine how Egan
uses language to reinforce the novel’s theme of authenticity and its relationship
to pop culture, and how music, used as a symbol, plays a role in the
development of that theme. We will further discuss how Egan’s efforts to make
sense of the emerging socially fractured world, shaped by the Internet and social
media, compares to the efforts of earlier writers we studied to address important
moral and social issues in their times. We’ll further note how Egan’s use of
new communication technologies as narrative devices in her novel raises
questions about the author’s and the text’s ambivalence about such
technologies. (four weeks)
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